Home > News Story and Obituary ArchiveLeon Lazarus, 1919/20-2008posted December 12, 2008

The writer Leon Lazarus, who scripted a number of comic book stories from the years 1947 until the middle 1960s, died in West Caldwell, New Jersey, late last month. He was either 88 or 89 years old -- his official obituary says 89.

Lazarus was born in New York City. He served during World War II as a radar instructor for the Army Air Corps in Italy. Upon return to America, Lazarus began his career as a writer of comics in 1947 at Martin Goodman's comic book company. He first worked for Editor Stan Lee and then for editor Al Jaffee as an assistant on the teen/humor books.

He also worked for Goodman's Magazine Management line on a number of publications, including a great deal of editing.

Two of Lazarus' public credits were "Wes Wilson, Worry-Wart" in 1961's Unknown Worlds #6 and the superhero story "When Attuma Strikes" in 1965's Tales to Astonish #64. Most of his works was believe to be uncredited; Fred Hembeck wrote CR to say that he always thought the Lazarus credit on the Tales To Astonish story was a pseudonym for someone else. A daughter posting to The Comics Treadmill board in 2004 said that her father did about 1500 comic book stories during this period.

He was the brother of Harry Lazarus, who built a fairly extensive comic book bibliography in the 1950s. Another brother Sid was an artist who worked for Fawcett, Holyoke and Quality in the 1940s before moving into magazine illustration.